The Girls of Slender Means Read Online Free PDF Page A

many desirable things, called the P.X. But she was accumulating a hoard of it, and had stopped lending.
        Anne said, "I don't want your bloody soap. Just don't ask for the taffeta, that's all."
        By this she meant a Schiaparelli taffeta evening dress which had been given to her by a fabulously rich aunt, after one wearing. This marvelous dress, which caused a stir wherever it went, was shared by all the top floor on special occasions, excluding Jane whom it did not fit. For lending it out Anne got various returns, such as three clothing coupons or a half-used piece of soap.
        Jane went back to her brain-work and shut the door with a definite click. She was rather tyrannous about her brain-work, and made a fuss about other people's wirelesses on the landing, and about the petty-mindedness of these haggling bouts that took place with Anne when the taffeta dress was wanted to support the rising wave of long-dress parties.
        "You can't wear it to the Milroy. It's been twice to the Milroy . . . it's been to Quaglino's, Selina wore it to Quags, it's getting known all over London."
        "But it looks altogether different on me, Anne. You can have a whole sheet of sweet-coupons."
        "I don't want your bloody sweet-coupons. I give all mine to my grandmother."
        Then Jane would put out her head. "Stop being so petty-minded and stop screeching. I'm doing brain-work."
        Jane had one smart thing in her wardrobe, a black coat and skirt made out of her father's evening clothes. Very few dinner jackets in England remained in their original form after the war. But this looted outfit of Jane's was too large for anyone to borrow; she was thankful for that, at least. The exact nature of her brain-work was a mystery to the club because, when asked about it, she reeled off fast an explanation of extreme and alien detail about costing, printers, lists, manuscripts, galleys and contracts.
        "Well, Jane, you ought to get paid for all that extra work you do."
        "The world of books is essentially disinterested," Jane said. She always referred to the publishing business as "the world of books." She was always hard up, so presumably ill paid. It was because she had to be careful of her shillings for the meter which controlled the gas-fire in her room that she was unable, so she said, to go on a diet during the winter, since one had to keep warm as well as feed one's brain.
        Jane received from the club, on account of her brain-work and job in publishing, a certain amount of respect which was socially offset by the arrival in the front hall, every week or so, of a pale, thin foreigner, decidedly in his thirties, with dandruff on his dark overcoat, who would ask in the office for Miss Jane Wright, always adding, "I wish to see her privately, please." Word also spread round from the office that many of Jane's incoming telephone calls were from this man.
        "Is that the May of Teck Club?"
        "Yes."
        "May I speak to Miss Wright privately, please?"
        At one of these moments the secretary on duty said to him, "All the members' calls are private. We don't listen in."
        "Good. I would know if you did, I wait for the click before I speak. Kindly remember."
        Jane had to apologise to the office for him. "He's a foreigner. It's in connection with the world of books. It isn't my fault."
        But another and more presentable man from the world of books had lately put in an appearance for Jane. She had brought him into the drawing room and introduced him to Selina, Anne and the mad girl Pauline Fox who dressed up for Jack Buchanan on her lunatic evenings.
        This man, Nicholas Farringdon, had been rather charming, though shy. "He's thoughtful," Jane said. "We think him brilliant but he's still feeling his way in the world of books."
        "Is he something in publishing?"
        "Not at the moment. He's still feeling his way. He's writing